Strategic & Critical Minerals

Antimony

A metalloid used in flame retardants, lead-acid batteries and increasingly in defence and energy storage.

SbStrategic score 85US Critical MineralEU Critical Raw Material

Price

$38,500 / USD/t

Price change

64.0%

Producing assets

Technologies

Context

Why it matters

Antimony has moved from an industrial commodity to an acute strategic concern following export restrictions.

Profile

Applications: Flame retardants, Lead-acid batteries, Ammunition and defence, Liquid metal batteries, Semiconductor dopants
Supply risk: Very high. Very few ex-China primary mines exist and prices have repriced sharply.
Geopolitics: China, Russia and Tajikistan dominate mine supply; Chinese export controls tightened the western market severely.
Substitutes: Limited alternatives in flame retardants without regulatory trade-offs.
Recycling: Substantial from lead-acid battery recycling.
Sustainability: Roasting can release arsenic and sulphur dioxide without adequate controls.
Forecast: Extremely tight market; western projects are strategically prioritised.
Key countries: 3 tracked producer and processing roles

Methodology

Version v0.1

Demand Outlook: 89 (weight 1.2) — Projected demand growth relative to the broader mineral economy over the next decade.
Supply Risk: 81 (weight 1.2) — Likelihood of supply falling short of demand, accounting for project pipeline and lead times.
Geographic Concentration: 94 (weight 1) — How concentrated mining and processing are across countries and companies.
Geopolitical Risk: 87 (weight 1) — Exposure to export controls, sanctions and jurisdictional instability.
Technology Importance: 95 (weight 1.1) — How central the mineral is to strategically important technologies.
Strategic Importance: 86 (weight 1) — Recognition in national critical mineral lists and defence supply chains.
Substitutability: 80 (weight 0.8) — How readily the mineral can be replaced without material performance loss. Higher is harder to substitute.
Recycling Potential: 80 (weight 0.7) — Ability of secondary supply to relieve primary demand. Higher means less relief available.

Assets

Smelting capacity in the historic centre of global antimony production.

A gold project that would also become the only domestically mined US antimony source.

Research

Export controls have moved antimony from an industrial afterthought to one of the most sharply repriced strategic minerals.

Materials

A soft metal recovered as a by-product of aluminium refining, essential to compound semiconductors.

A metalloid recovered from zinc residues and coal fly ash, critical to infrared optics and fibre.

The metal with the highest melting point of all elements, essential for cutting tools and armaments.